While students may submit one paper and one poster or infographic to the program, only one submission may be in the student competition. View eligibility, judging criteria, and other helpful information below.
Eligibility
Students are eligible for the competition for 12 months after the month of graduation, with current ESA student or student transition membership.
While all presenters may submit one oral and one poster or infographic to the Annual Meeting program, students may only submit one presentation to the student competition.
Evaluation & Judging
NEW FOR 2023: The rubric has been amended to be inclusive of education, outreach, and teaching presentations. The Student Competition Co-Chairs will do their best to group presentations on these subjects into sessions together, although a perfect fit is not always possible.
Students who present posters in the Student Competition will be evaluated in the following areas.
Scientific Content (50%)
- Title concise, informative, and relevant to poster content; judges to score title given on the poster, not what is listed in the program (5 points)
- Introduction, justification, and background with pertinent literature cited (5 points)
- Objectives or hypotheses clearly stated and concise / Objectives of course design or teaching program clearly stated and concise with learning gaps and target audience(s) identified (10 points)
- Materials and methods (study design) clear, concise, and appropriate to problem / Course or program design development and relevant evaluation metrics clear, concise, and appropriate for the learning gaps and audience(s) (10 points)
- Interpretation of results and analysis clear, concise & accurate and addresses needs of the target audience; if poster is billboard style, the central billboard message (“hook”) is supported by data provided (10 points)
- Significance of results to field of study or teaching community clearly discussed (10 points)
Poster Display (50%)
- Logical order, minimum redundancy (5 points)
- Effective use of space; smooth transition between sections (5 points)
- Legible with appropriate-size fonts, color contrast, no conflicting backgrounds (high contrast images (for example, avoiding color schemes that are hard to distinguish for colorblind participants like red/green); if poster is billboard style, QR code functions properly and directs viewer to concise, relevant content (15 points)
- Text with no grammatical errors and not excessively wordy (10 points)
- Effective use and description of visuals (i.e. photos, diagrams, figures, and tables), coordinated with & cited in text (15 points)
Each poster display is judged independently by three judges. In the event of a tie, the Student Competition Co-Chairs will use the abstract to determine a winner.
A Sample Poster Evaluation Form is available for reference.
Session
Students compete only against the students in their poster session and not against other students in the same topic area who were assigned to other sessions. The size of each session is dependent upon the initial number of posters submitted to a specific topic area.
NEW FOR 2023: The rubric has been amended to be inclusive of education, outreach, and teaching presentations. The Student Competition Co-Chairs will do their best to group presentations on these subjects into sessions together, although a perfect fit is not always possible.